Chapter 17
Jedidiah closed his laptop, stretching and letting out a slight groan. He was tired; he’d been busy all day, even with Mateo’s return to work. Jedidiah’s assistant had been gone for around an hour, and once he came back, Jedidiah assumed that he’d read about the kidnapping incident.
He assumed this, because Mateo kept looking like he wanted to say something, to ask him something, but would then look sad and not say anything instead. So as soon as Jedidiah finished his work, he walked over to Mateo’s desk, tapping the corner.
“Are you busy now, or can I take you somewhere?”
Mateo blinked a few times before standing up, placing down the sheet of paper he was doing whatever it was he actually did on. “Where are we going?” Mateo asked after a while, when the two had made it down to the main lobby.
Jedidiah took him to the hotel garage, where Jedidiah’s car was parked and waiting for them. “It will make sense when we get there, I promise,” he assured Mateo, pulling out of the car park once they were both safely strapped into their seats.
They drove in silence for around fifteen minutes, until the two arrived at a place which they both recognised, for different reasons.
Or perhaps, the same reason.
Getting out of the car, Jedidiah grabbed something from the glove box before leading Mateo over towards a small bench, sitting down casually and patting next to him. Mateo sat down shortly after, squeezing himself into the armrest-thing at the end as much as possible so as to not touch Jedidiah in any way.
Mateo was certain that physical contact of any kind, unless absolutely necessary, counted as getting too close to Jedidiah Hargrave, and Mateo was still absolutely adamant that he was going to stay entirely professional.
Jedidiah was silent for a moment, before pulling a box out of his pocket; the same box which he had taken from the glove box a few minutes prior. The man didn’t open the box, instead just holding it in his hand; it was a small thing with velvet along the outside, making it as soft as a mouse.
“If you have any questions about anything you read earlier, you’re welcome to just ask me. But if you have no questions, then I’ll just start talking on my own, and you can listen or tune it out as you wish.”
Mateo nodded slightly, letting himself slowly relax on the bench, realising that he had a few spare centimetres between himself and Jedidiah. “I don’t have any questions,” he lied. He absolutely wanted to ask Jedidiah about the attempted kidnapping, but he was also fairly certain that it must have been a traumatic event, and thus didn’t want to bring it up and make Jedidiah relive or think about anything which would make him uncomfortable.
“Alright then, I’ll just talk,” Jedidiah said after a moment, his voice gentle and calm. “This park right here, is where I was almost kidnapped when I was eight years old. Thanks to a little girl screaming, they didn’t manage to take me. But something I’ve always wondered about, is what events came first. Did my father take revenge by having Richard Lincoln killed, or was my attempted kidnapping to get back at Vincent for the murder? I simply don’t know, because my father was very secretive, and not even Alice, the person closest in his life, knew even a fraction of what he was doing behind the scenes.”
Mateo held his breath for a moment, something about what Jedidiah said had resonated with him, had made him remember something.
Truthfully, there was a lot of Mateo’s early childhood which he didn’t remember clearly. It wasn’t that he was forgetful, and more like…there had been an incident, when he was very young, only five years old. The Monteros had travelled to England for a holiday, as it was somewhere Emiliano had always wanted to visit.
But Mateo hardly remembered anything from the trip, because the same day that he and his family returned to Spain, their house was broken into. The area the Monteros lived in wasn’t a safe one, and this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened.
But it was an incident which all of them remembered well, apart from Mateo. That was because he had woken up in the middle of the night, feeling scared. He’d witnessed something scary in England, and it still gave him nightmares.
The child snatchers.
His grandma had always warned him about them, about how if he was naughty, he’d be taken away. And he’d seen it almost happen when in England, and now the young child was terrified that if he was bad, it would happen to him too.
So, he’d woken up from another nightmare, and wanted to wake up his parents. And Mateo had accidentally stumbled upon the man who’d broken in, right at the top of the stairs. The man, dressed in all black, instantly made Mateo think of the child snatchers and the boy from England, and he started to cry.
So the man grabbed Mateo, and threw him down the stairs in an effort to get him to shut up. Well, it worked. Mateo hit his head, falling unconscious.
There was actually nothing wrong with his brain, he had actually been fairly unharmed. But he was very young, and very scared. So, he’d repressed the memories which scared him; including the whole trip to England, and the boy he’d prevented from being kidnapped.
And Mateo forever remained scared of men dressed totally in black, without really being sure why.
That was until he became very good at kickboxing, and slowly conquered his fear by being able to protect himself.
And then Jedidiah had brought him to this park, one which felt familiar, but Mateo couldn’t quite put his finger on why, or why it also made him feel distinctly uncomfortable to be here.
“Mateo? Are you alright?” Jedidiah asked cautiously, reaching out and gently placing his hand on Mateo’s shoulder. The Spaniard blinked a few times before nodding. “I’m- I’m fine. Just had a strange feeling, but it’s fine. I’m sorry, what were you saying?”
Jedidiah smiled gently, reluctantly removing his hand from Mateo’s shoulder. “Oh, I was just showing you this clip; it’s all I have to try and find my saviour by. She dropped this clip, and it is all I have to remember that she even existed in the first place. But Mateo, you’ll never understand just how grateful I am to her, how important she is in my life. She was just a kid, but she was so brave, and it’s because of her that I’m even alive now. I genuinely don’t know what would’ve happened if I had been kidnapped back then.”
Mateo’s heart stopped. His memories may have been rather effectively suppressed, but he could recognise that clip anywhere. After all, it was not something that could be bought from a shop; it was one of a kind.
It was a plain pink clip with a little wooden butterfly on; a butterfly matching the clip Mateo still had from his childhood. A butterfly his grandfather had carved him when he was still just a kid, which his parents had attached to a clip so that he could wear it in his hair.
This clip was utterly unique; it was handmade; hand carved. And without a doubt, it was Mateo Montero’s.
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